It sounds different than something like the US, where if a law is unconstitutional it's struck down immediately (rather than giving time for the legislature to fix it), and the defendant acquitted (not sure what happens in germany).

> where if a law is unconstitutional it's struck down immediately

What? Cases take years or decades to make their way through the court system. You might be thinking of the fact that some laws get an injunction on their enforcement until they are ruled on, but that is not mandatory. More important, they are not struck down, only enjoined. And of course if the legislature changes the law, the case becomes moot by the time it reaches the court (this happens semi-regularly, where the court refuses to rule on the constitutionality of a law that is no longer on the books).

>What? Cases take years or decades to make their way through the court system. You might be thinking of the fact that some laws get an injunction on their enforcement until they are ruled on, but that is not mandatory.

It's implied that we're talking about what happens after it's decided. We obviously can't talk about the action of the court before it's been decided. What matters is what happens after a decision has been made. The grandparent comment gave me the impression that in germany, after a law has been found to be unconstitutional by the courts, it doesn't get struck down. Instead, it gets sent back to the legislature for revision, while remaining valid in the meantime.

>And of course if the legislature changes the law, the case becomes moot by the time it reaches the court (this happens semi-regularly, where the court refuses to rule on the constitutionality of a law that is no longer on the books).

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Is this supposed to be a flaw? What purpose does it serve to rule on laws that have already been revoked? To throw some shade on the legislative branch? To punish them somehow? Moreover, is this something that doesn't happen in germany?

I think I did not understand GGP the way you did, leading to me not making sense of your response. And of course it makes perfect sense not to rule on laws that have been repealed. :-)

It depends on the law. Often the law (usually just the specific provisions found unconstitutional) are immediately struck down. If there are wide decision to be made instead of the the status quo with the unconstitutional law, then the court will give parliament time to make the rules. This is currently the case with the election law where it's considered unconstitutional but there a multiple legal ways to design a legal one. The choice, how the law should look like, was passed back to parliament.

I think they are saying that if no replacement for Law A is found, Law A just gets re-instated. No reform, making rulings impotent.